Deer Park Grille
2201 Bandywood Dr., 383-0042.
Hours: 5-10 p.m. Sun.-Thurs.; 5-11 p.m. Fri. and Sat.; Sunday brunch 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. (Mother’s Day Brunch is completely booked)
Here’s a multiple choice question for you: Deer Park is... a) a wooded residential enclave within Nashville’s most select neighborhood; b) a new restaurant in Nashville’s second-most select neighborhood; c) a frame of reference.
The answer is d) all of the above. Named after Deer Park, an area of Belle Meade composed of two narrow, circling roads behind The Plantation, Deer Park Grille is a new restaurant on Bandywood Drive. And for a good many of its customers, it is a frame of reference offered by a neighborhood and a quality of life that is comfortable, secure and reassuringly familiar. Deer Park Grille is in the corner slot of Bandywood vacated last fall by Le Cou Rouge, which was an upscale, French-influenced restaurant owned by someone not-from-here.
Nashvillian Curt Cole, owner of Deer Park Grille, is from here; make no mistake about that. His father was raised in a home on Deer Park Drive, and Cole worked for Houston’s, another native icon, once out of school. After relocating to Washington, D.C., for positions with Houston’s and eventually Morton’s, Cole returned to Nashville and in 1988 opened Midtown Café with partner John Petrucelli. Five years later, he sold his share of Midtown and moved back to Washington to open Music City Roadhouse, a casual restaurant that Washington Post food critic Phyllis Richman named one of the area’s top 50 restaurants.
Pulled back by Nashville’s seemingly irresistible siren song in 1996, he became the food and beverage manager at Legends Club of Tennessee. While there, he kept an eye out for an opportunity to open another restaurant, and when Le Cou Rouge flew the coop, he jumped on the vacant building. He thought the 85-seat restaurant was the perfect fit for his idea of a warm, cozy bistro similar to the original concept of Midtown Café.
Though there is always plenty of risk in opening an independent restaurant, Cole’s hometown pedigree and contacts at least assured him of a good shot at success. But those advantages will only get a restaurateur so far; Cole is also a man who has learned a thing or two along the way, not the least of which is how the clientele he hoped to attract to Deer Park likes to eat, and likes to be treated. Which is how the frame of reference comes in handy.
After an interior revamp, designed to warm up the main dining room and small bar, Cole opened Deer Park Grille in March. He took up the post at the front door, and brought to the kitchen Culinary Institute of America grad Todd Gilliam, with whom Cole collaborated in creating a menu that was straightforward with a bit of an edge. “We’re not trying to teach people how to eat,” Cole says, “but we do want to stimulate the palate. We want to do all the little things that build a regular, loyal clientele.”
So, how’s he doing? Reservations—at least a week out—are already a must on weekends, and not a bad idea mid-week either. Sunday brunch is a bustling affair as well, with the restaurant being nearly equidistant from St. George’s, West End Methodist and First Pres. If you are home-churching these days, or if you mark your Sabbath on Saturday, Deer Park begins serving their challah French toast and Neptune omelets at 10:30 a.m. Get there early enough, and you’ll be paying your check as late service is letting out.
Much of the talk about Deer Park has touted the lively ambiance and familiar embrace of the dining room. “Everybody’s there!” exclaimed one woman who was already calling it her favorite new restaurant. “You know everyone!” If you grew up or reside outside of the 37205, 37215 or 37221 zips, though, you may not know a soul. Of course, knowing everyone in a restaurant is not a big selling point for me: I prefer to focus on my dining companions, and not be interrupted by table-hopping enthusiasts who insist on chitchatting while my fried calamari gets cold.
Yet, there is a difference between privacy and isolation, and a note must be made here of a possible situation that could detract from your dining experience. On my first visit on a Saturday night, I arrived 15 minutes past our 8 p.m. reservation and found my party of six rather unhappily seated in a small area between the dining room and the back of the house. My seat against the wall offered a view through a doorway into the server’s pantry, and of the servers walking in and out of said pantry to the kitchen all evening.
Though none of us had a Deer Park frame of reference, our placement prevented us from even knowing if there was anyone we knew in the dining room. The volume of talk and laughter emanating from there certainly implied that everyone knew each other, and we felt a little left out.
In making a reservation a couple of days later for a return visit, my companion was told, in response to her request for a table in the dining room, that all the restaurant’s tables are in the dining room. This is simply not true. My suggestion to Deer Park would be to either save that space for walk-ins or for special requests (some people do prefer their privacy), or let folks know when they make their reservations that the main dining room is already full, and that their table will be in the smaller room.
But even our unfortunate table placement did not detract long from our very pleasant evening at Deer Park, and on my second visit on a Monday, I gained entrée to the dining room, which was quite comfortable, minus the hullabaloo inherent to more frenetic nights.
Some of the credit for the success of the first visit must be given to our waitress, the delightful Yaylagul, who emigrated from Turkey to join her musician boyfriend here. Her amiable attention to our table was not only professional, but utterly charming.
A restaurant will live or die by its food, and Gilliam has made an auspicious debut. There is nothing on the menu that requires a LaRousse dictionary, but the straightforward and fairly standard fare—crab cakes, calamari, pasta, veal chop, pork chops and filet—is substantial, marked by plenty of flavor and a unique marker, such as a sauce, chutney, vinaigrette or salsa, that kicks things up a bit, though not so much as to turn off conservative diners. The more adventurous have options, but vegetarians will feel quite left out, with not a single meatless offering—other than side salads and veggies—on the menu. There are also three fish specials daily, though these days there is not much special about salmon or mahi mahi, two of the three we were offered. But both were perfectly cooked, and the salmon was nicely complemented with a glaze of pesto.
People around here love crab cakes, and Deer Park Grille’s are good, served with a Cajun remoulade and a lovely citrus vinaigrette. The shrimp scampi is presented in a small ramekin of garlicy butter, with toasted bread for dipping. The tastiest starter was the savory portabello tart, a construction in puff pastry, filled with mushroom, smoked sausage and Parmesan cheese, sided with a chunky vegetable salsa.
One of two pasta selections is a Cajun-inspired creation of chicken, shrimp and andouille sausage over penne in a very rich roasted garlic cream sauce. Deer Park’s excellent cioppino—a classic seafood stew of white fish, mussels, shrimp and scallops cooked with chopped onions and herbs in a garlic-white wine-tomato broth—is also on the pasta list, as it is served over rigatoni. I would skip the rigatoni the next time, and enjoy the cioppino as it is served in San Francisco, with some crusty French bread for sopping up the broth.
With the exception of the fabulous pan-fried rainbow trout beautifully complemented by a charred tomato and bacon vinaigrette, the entrées lean to the meat-and-potatoes ilk. All are served with a small salad and the vegetable of the day, along with a side chosen for the dish: superb garlic mashed potatoes for the bacon-wrapped filet and the grilled boneless pork chops, pan-roasted potatoes for the apple-and-onion stuffed veal chop, a risotto cake for the duck breast. The Ashley Farms double chicken breast, butterflied, rubbed with garlic, roasted in a tomato-basil broth, and served atop a baby artichoke-potato ragout, was outstanding, quintessential comfort food.
Prices at Deer Park are very comforting too for those who don’t boast a Belle Meade portfolio, with starters from $1.95 for a cup of soup, to $7.95, and entrées all under $20. Dinner for two, with two glasses of wine, can be had for $50. Cole explains, “We want to keep prices reasonable so people can come in a couple times a week.”
With good food, attentive service and a dining room this convivial, there’s no doubt there will be plenty of return business. You don’t need to know everyone—or even anyone—at Deer Park to eat there; simply call ahead, and they’ll hold a table just for you.
